I don't love Cristian Rizzo's work. I know it's sacrilege in this town where everyone is falling all over themselves in praise of him. Adam and I went to see his piece b.c, janvier 1545, fontainebleau. at On The Boards this last weekend. The work was a solo for dancer Julie Guibert though it was simultaneously a duet for Guibert and Rizzo. This is the second time I've had the opportunity to witness Rizzo's staged work and the two experiences feel so similar. He creates the most meticulous and striking visuals on the stage. Both times the set has been multi-layered, shifted during the performance and provided a changing landscape. Both times I have really loved looking at the set on the stage. What I long for in Rizzo's work, I think, is for the performers to change along with the props. I long for a surprise.
In last weekends work the curtain opens on a Guibert laying on a table with her back to us. The floor is covered in candles. Rizzo is a cross between a modern day skateboarder, an aristocrat, and a bunny rabbit. He watches her then he s-l-o-w-l-y picks up two candles and places them on the table. Right away I know what we're in for here. She will repeat a phrase and perform variations on it and he will watch her and collect the candles. But dammit there are so many candles. I'm agitated in my seat. I don't want to sit here and watch the candle collecting. This is potentially a great place to put me in. This agitated state can be a great place to speak to me. Make me think its one thing and the BAM show me it isn't. Agitate me for long enough that the most minute satisfaction will feel colossal and then here I am in the experience of being moved by something that would normally not even register on my radar. But no, he picks up all the candles as she repeats the phrase and its variations.
Julie Guibert has an incredible facility. Her performance is full of astounding and elegant feats of strength. Watching this understated Olympian-ness was refreshing. I kept recalling a performance at last years NorthWest New Works festival where a company made a work based around really brazen feats of strength and how I kept wanting them to be more impossible. If the message is "look at how incredibly impressive this is" I wanted it to be fucking impossible to understand. But Guibert, who broadcast no ego that night, left me awestruck. This is the nature of my thoughts as I watch her move. I'm thinking things like "that is so much harder than it looks" and "now this phrase is in this facing". With the exception of two birdlike arm flaps by Rizzo, which engaged me most of anything in the evening, I relate to the movement in an almost scholastic capacity.
I wanted more from the night which went like this: A woman lies on a table and begins to move while things around her exit. The candles leave. The props leave. The hanging sculptures leave. The man pulling the strings leaves. The curtain closes and when it opens again she is alone in the pure white room, finally. She is looking at us, finally. And I think, aw - now the piece can begin! But it's over and the crowd is going fucking ape shit. He comes out and bows and is just adorable without his bunny mask on.
I leave as unsatisfied as I left his work the last time. Yet I know I will see him again if I get the opportunity. I think this is why - though I don't leave steeped in that Spoken To Through Art feeling, I do know with complete certainty that what I have witnessed is crafted, made with meticulous intention and thought, and most importantly it is sincere. It is made sincerely and it is offered sincerely and that is always a gift. A rare gift and an inspiring one.
